UB40

I hate UB40. I hate them with a passion that has nothing to do with the band, their songs or their sound and everything to do with Sunday afternoons.
You couldn’t get away from UB40 on a Sunday in my village. ‘There’s a rat in my kitchen’ was pumped out of crap stereos in row upon row of back gardens. You could hear ‘Red, Red Wine’ wafting through kitchen windows in entire streets and if this wasn’t bad enough, it came wrapped in the smells of cooked cabbage, for UB40 was the official soundtrack to the Sunday Roast. And ‘Kingston Town’ blasted out of car stereos the village over, making UB40 truly unavoidable.
Back when I was young, shops didn’t open on a Sunday. Nothing did, apart from the pubs and the off-licenses. The pubs, restricted by the licence laws at the time, opened between 11am and 2pm and again between 7pm and 10pm, and the off-licences sold alcohol in hours to match.
When I was a child, Sundays meant four things: Sunday dinner, dad coming home from the pub drunk and late for dinner, a bath before school and UB40.
I loved Sunday dinner (still do), but I hated that dad would be drunk and that he and mam would argue. I liked school, but I still got a sinking feeling when bathtime rolled around because it heralded the end of the weekend, and I hate UB40 because it reminds me of all of the above. There was nothing to do on a Sunday except play outside and wait for these four things to happen.
A quiet desperation clung to the village on even the sunniest, shiniest of Sundays.
By the time I hit mid teens, Sundays hadn’t changed much: I still looked forward to mam’s dinner but got the same sinking feeling in my stomach as the clock hand landed on two-thirty and dad stumbled up the drive, but the bath before school had been replaced by a mad dash to the offie.
We would hit the offie at noon, drink down our purchases, go for Sunday dinner, have a bit of a nap then make a mad dash back down the offie at seven for more booze. Depending on how much we’d bought and who was drinking that evening (we always underestimated how much we’d need when Trish was with us), we’d make one final dash in the run-up to ten. We’d usually get there at one-minute-to, purple in colour and about to heave our guts up.
And still, UB40 blared out of anything with speakers.

Weapons in general

What is it with teenage boys who grow up in the valleys and weapons? All my friends had stacks of stuff that got them into all kinds of trouble. There were long bows, cross bows (which you can’t buy now until you’re 18, drat it), ninja stars, knuckledusters, replica handguns, knives of all shapes and sizes and air rifles in abundance. One of my friends had so many different weapons that he painted his bedroom black and decorated it with his mini arsenal. Another of my friends was asked if she wanted to buy a hand grenade one day when she was sat in class in college (see it aint just the guys you know). The Army & Navy stores in the valleys were doing better trade than Marks and Spencer’s back in the late eighties.

12 bore shotgun

When I was about 13, I fired a 12 bore shotgun. My dad took me and my sister up the mountain with his mate to pick mushrooms (the kind you eat without thinking you’re the rounder half of French and Saunders). It was dead exciting; we got up really early and trekked up through farmer’s fields in our best wellies and waterproof coats and spent a good few hours picking loads of lovely mushrooms. I can remember thinking how chuffed Mam would be when we brought back bulging bags of stuff we could eat, like real foragers. I planned to eat nothing but hand-picked mushrooms until they ran out. Then I took a closer look and saw that the mushrooms had little worms in them and I wasn’t quite so keen.
Anyhow, back to the shotgun.
Being the bolshy little sod that I was back then, I kept nagging my dad’s mate for a go of his gun. I’d shot air rifles before – no problem - and I wanted to trade up to something proper. Eventually, he said I could have a go and gave me a quick tutorial on how to fire the gun, which I thought was a bit daft and unnecessary as the thing only had a barrel and a trigger and I had enough aptitude to tell which was which, so I didn’t really pay attention. Maybe his mistake was in letting me hold it while he talked.
We collectively decided that I would aim for a puddle on the edge of the field. No problemo, I thought. I raised the gun, blimey it was heavy, and took shaky aim. So engrossed was I in hitting the target and showing off in front of my sister that I forgot the one cardinal rule of firing something with a kick meaner than a mule when the vet calls round with his rubber gloves already on: tuck the non-firing end deep into your shoulder. I very quickly understood this rule when I, having left a good centimetre gap between shoulder and said non-barrel-end, pulled the trigger and the kick almost sent me to the mushroom-strewn ground. I had a bruise for weeks, but worse than that, I missed the puddle by a couple of inches.
Bastard.
Next time the opportunity to shoot the shit out of a puddle presents itself, boy-oh-boy I’ll be ready though.

Bye Bye Birdy 2

Only joking – couldn’t resist!

Bye Bye Birdy

I have a sneaky suspicion that my friends shot and killed birds. They would never do it in front of me or admit to it (I’d go mental and they knew it), but I’m sure they did take out the occasional feathered friend.
I came surprisingly close myself, once. I had tracked the bird and had it centred perfectly in the sights (I had no idea what species of bird it was or whether it was male or female – my generation don’t seem to know these things – though my mam or dad could have probably told me at the drop of a hat). I felt a thrill that I had kept the gun trained on the bird as it hopped its way along the tree branches and part of me wanted to see if my aim was as good as I thought it was.
“Go on”, whispered a voice in my head. “Just go ahead and do it. Everyone else does”.
That voice has tipped me over the edge of indecision into making so many mistakes in my lifetime, but I’m glad to say this wasn’t one of those times.
In the end it came down to respect for life (not how cute the ickle birdy wirdy was). What right did I have to kill the bird? None whatsoever, so I lowered the rifle and watched him (or her) sit in the sun and ruffle his feathers.
Then my mate came along and shot him.

Air Rifles 3

My friends and I never got into any serious trouble because of air rifles, though a man in the village known for sitting out in his garden with his top off, huge beer belly on show for the world to see, sipping beer from a can (nice), did get arrested for leaning out of his bedroom window and picking off the birds in his garden. He claimed it was pest control. I think that he just liked killing things.

Air Rifles 2

I’ve been shot twice by an air rifle; once in the chest and once in the leg. My sister was shot in the arse and my ex boyfriend was shot in the neck and about a hair’s breadth to the left of his scrotum (I admit to shooting him in the neck, but it was my friend who just missed the scrotum, swear to God). My other friend shot some poor lad we didn’t even know through the ear lobe and shot the nose off a sheep. He claimed they were both accidents, but I’m convinced he aimed for that sheep.
Air rifles are bloody lethal, as pretty much everyone in our group of friends can attest.



You probably want to know the ins and outs of how I came to shoot my ex boyfriend in the neck (knew I wouldn’t get out of explaining that one). It was an accident, but if you ask me, he kind of deserved it, the silly sod.
Me, my sister, my mate, my ex boyfriend, my ex-ex boyfriend and my future boyfriend (see chapter 8 on Incestuous Friends) were walking down ‘the line’ shooting at tin cans and pylons. My ex and my ex-ex both had their air rifles with them and we were all taking turns to have a go.
So there I was, happily aiming at the danger sign on a nearby pylon (no the brightest of moves, I’ll grant you), ready to take my shot, safety off, when my ex called out my name, sounding urgent. I sung around, gun still raised, to find him aiming his rifle at my face. What can I say? It must have been a trigger reaction. I squeezed mine and shot him in the neck.
He was very good about it and said that he shouldn’t have called out (pointing the gun at my head was fine), but I’d had the fright of my life. All I could think of was what if I’d shot him in the eye and blinded him? How disappointed would my mum be?
Two days later, I felt much better. My future boyfriend shot my ex boyfriend in the thigh, just missing his scrotum. Apparently, scrotums are far more important that necks and his relief that his sack was intact was so great, the neck incident was all but forgotten.

Air Rifles

There were two main pastimes in the village where I grew up (if you discount nicking stuff and sniffing glue): fishing and shooting. Sounds very “ra ra ra, daddy bought me a pony”, but the truth is closer to “oh shit, look what I’ve done – run away”.
Every single one of my male friends had a fishing rod and an air rifle. None of them had a fishing license and the rifles were fired without thought to surroundings and situations. This led to interesting consequences.

Kiss Chase

The summer months meant one thing in primary school: kiss chase. We played it relentlessly from April through to the end of term; that and Red Rover (if any of these games are a mystery to you, flag down the nearest over-thirty-year-old and ask them for an explanation).
The school didn’t like us playing Red Rover –it was too rough, apparently, and the risk of an accident was too high. They obviously never saw us play kiss chase.
Mark Hampton caught me by the ankle during one game (as I was running away, full pelt) and I went down so hard I think the walls of my lungs met. Before I had chance to draw breath, Mark was on top of me, intent on claiming his victory kiss.
He got it. I couldn’t breathe, never mind fight him off.
The week after that, me and a couple of the other girls got told off for ‘topless sunbathing’. We’d tucked down the straps of our sun top to avoid getting tan lines. We called it smart thinking. The school called it ‘slutty behaviour’. We kept our straps up after that (unless we were down the banking, in the long grass, where they couldn’t see us).

Eisteddfod 2

I was never picked for the clog dancing team. I tried out every time, but was never successful. Instead, I got to play the xylophone.
What a treat for me.
OK, so I was fat. Still had two legs, didn’t I? Had fat fingers, but that didn’t stop me playing the sodding xylophone.

Eisteddfod

Primary school heralded the start of my ‘Eisteddfod’ career. I was recruited into the choir (and any other singing group that the school had going on), the recital groups and the drama group and was yanked out of lessons at will to practise.
The Eisteddfod, for those not in the know, is a traditional Welsh annual cultural festival and competition. They also have them in Australia, bizarrely.
Anyhoo, winning the Eisteddfod was EVERYTHING. Hours and hours of practise went into it – before school, in the breaks, after school, at weekends and even during lessons in the weeks before.
I missed soooooooooo many lessons due to Eisteddfod practise. To this day, fractions remain a mystery.

Babanod 3

I’ll leave you with one final incident from this chapter of my life. I have a clear memory from my final year in Babanod, when my teacher gave me a row. The class had been asked to colour in some flowers (some Easter themed activity, no doubt) and I had coloured in all the flower centres in yellow. Sensible enough, I thought, as most flower centres ARE yellow. Wrong.
The teacher, who was known and feared throughout the land for being hot-tempered and a bit nasty, went mental. She towered over me and screeched,
“WHY HAVE YOU DONE THEM ALL IN YELLOW? I TOLD YOU TO USE ALL THE COLOURS”.
I fully intended on using all the colours – when it came to the petals. I thought that this was blindingly obvious and opened my mouth to tell her, but she screeched some more and my feeble “yes, but” was lost in the roar of her anger.
“Are all flower centres yellow? Are they? ARE THEY?”
Yes, I thought. They are.
“NO”, she screamed. “They’re all the colours of the RAINBOW”.
I sat looking at my neatly coloured yellow centres in complete bewilderment.
Back then, I thought Miss Whedon had simply flipped her lid. Now, I think that she wasn’t getting any at home.

Babanod 2

I liked school, a lot. School is a breeze for some and a nightmare for others, but for even the breeziest bunch there are storms to weather.
The second biggest memory I have of Babanod (apart from Lucy doing a poo in her knickers then doing a headstand) is leaving all my friends and moving up a year because they had stuck me in the wrong class to begin with.
My birthday is in August. Due to some off-the-chart act of stupidity, someone classed August as the start of the school year and not the end of it. When they realised the mistake they’d made, a whole bunch of us were unceremoniously uprooted and moved. So me and three other unfortunates with birthdays in the eighth month missed a whole year of lessons and left all our friends behind because some muppet couldn’t use a calendar properly.
To add insult to injury, we were told not to worry, that we were being ‘watched’ closely to make sure we were keeping up in class. Welcome to Big Brother, South Wales, circa 1982.

Babanod

On the first day of school I was told that I was adopted.
I didn’t go to nursery, or pre-school or kindergarten, or whatever-the-hell it’s called now. I was thrown straight into infants (or, rather, Babanod. I attended a Welsh-language school because my friend was being sent there and I screamed until my mother agreed that I could go too. She hated it and I loved it – my friend, that is, not my mother. Go figure).
On the very first day, I stood outside in the playground waiting to go into the assembly hall when two big kids from primary came up to me and started chatting. This is great, I thought - school is easy. Everyone’s friendly and they all like me already. I’m sorted.
“How old’s yer mam?” asked one of the girls.
“43” I said, pleased that I knew the answer (for some reason, I was always asking Mam how old she was. As a child, I was obsessed with knowing my own - and everyone else in my small social circle’s - age).
The girls looked at each other and laughed.
“Your mam’s too old to have kids”, one of them, who I later found out was called Linda and was a complete bitch, said. “You must be adopted”.
Lucky for me I was balshy. I stuck my hands on my hips and declared, “NO, I’M NOT” (I probably added something lame like ‘you’re adopted’ for good measure, but the memory escapes me). They just shrugged and walked away, but not before Lisa had casually shouted over her shoulder,
“I’d ask yer mam and dad if you’re adopted. Maybe they’re keeping it secret from you”.
I frowned and called “I’m not adopted” after their retreating backs, but they ignored me. Fine, I thought. I’ll ignore you and your stupid theory (OK, I was five and didn’t think that, but with the gift of hindsight and artistic license, it’s what I wish I’d thought, so it’s going in).
The first thing I did when I got home was burst out crying and wail “MAAAAAAAM, am I adopted?”
Man, she must have had serious doubts about the calibre of that school.
Anyhow, that was the first say that I heard the story of how dad had “courted” mam for thirteen years before she finally agreed to marry him (apparently, she was having far too much of a laugh to get married and be tied down with family and kids – way to go mam! Come to think of it, way to go dad for holding out for so long). They started trying for kids straight away, but nothing happened. Four years later, when they were on the verge of giving up, I came along; their bundle of joy.
So I wasn’t adopted. I was something worth waiting for
Put that in your pipe and smoke it, mean girls.

Intro

I grew up in a small village in South Wales. I wouldn’t say that it was a mining village – not in my time or before – it was just a village, small in size and population, and home to me and my friends.
I was a child of the 80s and a teenager of the 90s. Most of my memories are of my teenage years, but there are a couple of earlier recollections that I couldn’t resist including.
All of the events in this blogtook place. I’m certain of this because they happened to me. I won’t tell you my name or the name of the village I grew up in, indeed all of the names are made up, because it’s more fun this way: at some stage or other, I bet you’ll think to yourself “I know who that is!”.
If you grew up in a little village in South Wales in the 80s and 90s, you may be right.